Replies to post #153866 on Biotech Values

[poorgradstudent]

I.e., the smaller number of patients in the trial should make it much more difficult to attain stat sig results yet the results were robust enough to do just that.

I would disagree with this.

I would think that such small numbers increase your chance of seeing a result that is not representative of the "true" outcome as would be revealed by a large trial. In a sense, the result here is driven by the 4 control patients... if by chance they're a tightly knit group of 4 with very similar (but somewhat atypical) outcomes (ie. low st. dev.), then they could be the driving reason for the statistical significance.

Put it this way: if these results were stat sig from 4 patients on drug and 12 on the control, there would be significant skepticism (rightly in my mind) about a company touting a stat sig result. I don't see why having 12 patients on drug and 4 on control makes it any more comforting.

[caravon]

Just look at any PFS and OS graphics. There are always pts who progress much more slow than the rest and there are always pts who live much, much longer than mOS.

Just flip a coin. If you flip it 10 times, there is a good possibility that one side will come 8, 9, and even 10 times. Only flipping a coin a large number of times, one can expect to see both sides coming equally.